Wednesday, August 12th

Hundreds of thousands without power days after Midwest storm

By RYAN J. FOLEY Associated Press

Residents begin cleaning up storm damage from dangerous straight-line winds and possible tornadoes caused by a rare derecho on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020, in Wakarusa, Ind. (Robert Franklin/South Bend Tribune via AP)

A loader clears a path from downed trees on Chandler Street SW, Monday, Aug. 10, 2020, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Andy Abeyta/The Gazette via AP)

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) - Hundreds of thousands of households in Iowa and Illinois remained without electricity Wednesday, two days after a rare wind storm that hit the Midwest devastated parts of the power grid, flattened valuable corn fields and killed two people.

Much of Iowa and parts of several other states suffered outages Monday as straight-line winds toppled trees, snapped poles and downed power lines. The storm known as a derecho had winds of up to 112 mph near Cedar Rapids, as powerful as a hurricane, as it tore from eastern Nebraska across Iowa and into Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.

The derecho produced seven tornadoes in the Chicago metropolitan area, including an EF-1 tornado with 110 mph winds that hit the Rogers Park neighborhood on the city's north side before moving onto Lake Michigan as a waterspout, the National Weather Service said.

That storm left damage along a 3-mile-long (4.8-kilometer-long) path before reaching the lake and was the first tornado of at least EF-1 strength to strike Chicago since a May 29, 1983, storm, the weather service said.

The steeple at College Church in Wheaton, Ill. was toppled during a storm Monday, Aug. 10, 2020, in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Ill. Church officials check out the damage from the rooftop which also left several trees in the nearby park heavily damaged. (Mark Welsh /Daily Herald via AP)

Another EF-1 tornado that swept through Wheaton, Illinois, knocked over the iconic white steeple atop College Church in the Chicago suburb that is the DuPage County seat.

The weather service also confirmed two tornadoes in southern Wisconsin and two in northern Indiana, including an EF-1 that swept the rural community of Wakarusa, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of South Bend, leaving behind smashed grain bins, damaged barns and farmhouses.

Rob Gieger helps to clean up storm damage from dangerous straight-line winds and possible tornadoes caused by a rare derecho on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020, in Wakarusa, Ind. (Robert Franklin/South Bend Tribune via AP)

The path of a possible tornado is evident in a cornfield after a powerful storm on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020, in Wakarusa, Ind. (Robert Franklin/South Bend Tribune via AP)

Crews throughout the region have been working around the clock to restore electricity, but they've been hindered by large trees that are blocking many roads and sitting on top of power lines. Those trees must be removed before power can be restored.

Iowa's three largest metropolitan areas of Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport still had widespread outages as of Wednesday morning.

Alliant Energy said about 176,000 of its customers are without power, about half of which are in the Cedar Rapids area. MidAmerican Energy said about 139,000 of its Iowa and Illinois customers remain without power, half them in the Des Moines area.

As of late Wednesday morning, ComEd reported that about 200,000 of its Chicago-area customers remained without power. Northern Indiana Public Service Co. reported about 18,500 of its Indiana customers were still in the dark.

Mediacom said Wednesday that it has restored internet service to about half of the 340,000 customers that were offline a day earlier in Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. But many others may be without service until their power is restored, a process that could still take multiple days in places.

The storm caused extensive crop damage in the nation's No. 1 corn producing state as it tore across Iowa's center from west to east.

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig said Tuesday that about 10 million acres of Iowa's nearly 31 million acres of agriculture land sustained damage. About 24 million acres of that is land typically planted primarily in corn and soybeans.

In addition, tens of millions of bushels of grain that were stored at co-ops and on farms were damaged or destroyed as bins blew away.

The only known death in Iowa was a 63-year-old bicyclist who was hit by one of several large trees that fell on a bike path outside of Cedar Rapids. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, the storm killed a 73-year-old woman who was found clutching a young boy in her storm-battered mobile home.

Many businesses, including banks, restaurants and a major corn processing plant in Cedar Rapids, remained closed Wednesday due to power outages.

The Cedar Rapids school district reported that over 20 of its buildings had roof and other structural damage, ranging from minor to significant, and that it was considering pushing back this month's start date.

Part of a tree that had split at the trunk lies on a road in Oak Park, Ill., while also appearing not to have landed on a car parked on the road, after a severe storm moved through the Chicago area Monday, Aug. 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Dave Zelio)

State Sen. Liz Mathis said she took cover in the basement of her suburban Cedar Rapids home Monday as the storm battered her neighborhood for 45 minutes. She said pictures fell of the wall, water seeped in through windows and she worried the glass would blow in and hurt her.

Mathis said the devastation is widespread across her district, and the "tree damage is unreal." People are waiting an hour or longer at gas stations to fill up their vehicles and get fuel for chain saws, as some are closed or have run out of gas, she said.

Residents are clearing out their refrigerators and freezers after their food has spoiled. A local utility official told Mathis on Wednesday that it could be a week before everyone's power is restored.

"The cities are going to look much different without the trees and it's going to take a while to recover from this," she said.

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Associated Press reporter Dave Pitt contributed from Des Moines.

Laurie Berdahl stands in her front yard beginning to clean up downed limbs around her home, Monday, Aug. 10, 2020, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Berdahl's home suffered only minor damage but like most of the city she was without power. (Andy Abeyta/The Gazette via AP)

Residents clean up after tornado-like winds felled trees and destroyed mobile homes in various parts of downtown on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020, in Forreston, Ill. (Scott P. Yates/Rockford Register Star via AP)

Residents clean up after tornado-like winds felled trees and destroyed mobile homes in various parts of downtown on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020, in Forreston, Ill. (Scott P. Yates/Rockford Register Star via AP)

Residents begin cleaning up storm damage from dangerous straight-line winds and possible tornadoes on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020, in Wakarusa, Ind. (Robert Franklin/South Bend Tribune via AP)

Residents begin cleaning up storm damage from dangerous straight-line winds and possible tornadoes caused by a rare derecho on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020, in Wakarusa, Ind. (Robert Franklin/South Bend Tribune via AP)

Volunteers from Little Prairie Mennonite Church in Dixon clear debris from Candlelight Mobile Home Park on Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2020, in Forreston, Ill. (Scott P. Yates/Rockford Register Star via AP)

Dan Rippy of Forreston clears debris from his granddaughter's bedroom in a home in the Candlelight Mobile Home Park on Tuesday, August 11, 2020, in Forreston, Ill. (Scott P. Yates/Rockford Register Star via AP)

Dan Rippy of Forreston clears debris from his granddaughter's bedroom in a home in the Candlelight Mobile Home Park on Tuesday, August 11, 2020, in Forreston, Ill.. Rippy's daughter Tiara owns the home and she was sleeping during the incident. The granddaughter was not home at the time. (Scott P. Yates/Rockford Register Star via AP)

Residents help clear a fallen tree from an intersection after a severe storm, Monday, Aug. 10, 2020, in Iowa City, Iowa. (Joseph Cress/Iowa City Press-Citizen via AP)

Sam Klaes, 13, of North Liberty, Iowa, wheels a barrel full of branches and twigs to the curb while helping family members clean up debris after a severe storm Monday, Aug. 10, 2020, in North Liberty. (Joseph Cress/Iowa City Press-Citizen via AP)